Mahlon Hoagland on Becoming a Scientist
  Mahlon Hoagland     Biography    
Recorded: 08 Jun 2006

That’s the most difficult question of all. I went to medical school and I wanted to become a surgeon. I had no interest in science at all. I got tuberculosis in my last year of medical school and decided to go down to the Mass General Hospital where there was some interesting work going on and do some research for a year until I got better and could go back to surgery.

Within three months the experience for me was an epiphany. I just loved it. I felt very happy to be in a situation where I never expected to be in. I had no further problems about what I wanted to do with my life. That’s basically the way I got started.

Mahlon Hoagland, a molecular biologist who was one of the discoverer of the transfer ribonucleic acid - tRNA. He received a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1948. He served as a doctor during the Second World War. When the War ended he returned to Harvard and became researcher in the Huntington Laboratories at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He worked in the bacteriology and immunology department of Harvard Medical School from 1952 till 1967.

Working together with Paul Zamecnik and Elizabeth Keller he discovered the initial steps of protein synthesis. Two years later in 1958 Hoagland and Zemecnik discovered tRNA. His main input to the laboratory was in his work with amino acid activating enzymes. He noticed that certain enzymes were required to activate amino acids so they could combine with tRNA molecules and eventually be incorporated into new protein molecules. These enzymes were named aminoacyl tRNA synthetases.

In 1957 Hoagland moved to Cambridge where he worked for a year with Crick at Cambridge University. Working together they tried to explain the genetic code. He was Associate Professor of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School and in 1967 was appointed professor in the biochemistry department at the Dartmouth Medical School. After 3 years he left Dartmouth and became Director and President of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Massachusetts. He retired in 1985.

Mahlon Hoagland was awarded the Franklin Medal for life science. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences. He died on September 19, 2009.

More Information: Wikipedia

SCIENTISTS SPEAKING ABOUT BECOMING A SCIENTIST
Left         Right